A summer tradition for more than two decades, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival launched its very first fall festival just two months ago, and it has been warmly embraced by the local arts community. The inaugural season concludes this week with another varied program showcasing the versatility of these chamber virtuosi: Look out for Leonard Bernstein’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, Tomaso Albioni’s Concerto in C Major, Andres Jolivet’s Pastorales de Noel, and Boris Blacher’s Divertimento for Trumpet, Trombone and Piano.

If you can’t make this Thursday show, the group will repeat this program at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lake Worth.

Whether you’re ready for them or not, the holidays are here already, folks: Radio stations are starting to trickle Christmas songs into their rotations, and Costco has begun to stock up on trees. For the second production of its inaugural season, the Wick Theatre is likewise starting the holiday madness early with “White Christmas,” a regional take on the Tony-winning Broadway musical from 2008.

The show is classical in style thanks to its source material, the Golden Age Hollywood musical of the same name, directed by Michael Curtiz in 1954. The plot is fairly straightforward showbiz froth about song-and-dance men who fall in love with a talented sister act and band together to save the Vermont inn run by their former commanding general. But the show will probably forever endure thanks to its iconic Irving Berlin songs, including “Sisters,” “Blue Skies,” “I Love a Piano” and, of course, “White Christmas.”

Chris Evert, the retired tennis star who founded this durable charity tennis event, once told an interviewer, “we have some good tennis, and we have some ugly tennis, but it’s always a lot of fun.” The racket-wielding stars are miked on the court, so whenever Jon Lovitz, a regular participant, finds the humor in a missed shot or an effective serve, the audience can hear him; since John McEnroe doesn’t play in this tournament, we can assume the audio will be family-friendly.

The lineup of talent for this year’s 20th anniversary event includes Elisabeth Shue, Alan Thicke, David Cook, Gavin Rossdale, Martina Navratilova and many others, all gathering to raise money for abused, neglected and at-risk children throughout the state of Florida. Last year alone, $600,000 were raised from ticket sales and the star-studded gala at the Boca Raton Resort & Club, pushing the event’s two-decade total to more than $20 million.

Miami City Ballet will launch its 2013-2014 season with one of its most anticipated company premieres: Christopher Wheeldon’s masterful 2003 ballet “Polyphonia,” set to the frenzied piano music of Gyorgy Ligeti. The piece is said to signify the choreographer’s transition from emerging talent to celebrated artist, and the eight-dancer ensemble showcases his geometric movements and bracing sense of surprise. The program also includes two George Balanchine pieces: “Serenade,” his Tchaikovsky-scored American debut from 1934; and “Ballo della Regina,” his 1978 ballet set to music from Verdi’s opera “Don Carlos,” which is known for the extremely difficult choreography of its female lead.

Carmen J. Cartiglia, the founder of the Miami Beach Jazz Festival, has stated that “there are many music festivals that call themselves ‘jazz’ events, but are all too often watered down with other types of music.” Ain’t that the truth. He hopes to remedy that quasi-jazz affliction with his new festival, which celebrates its inaugural event this weekend.

The lineup of performers skews toward traditionalist jazz while remaining sonically eclectic, attracting performers from across the globe. It will be headlined by vocalist Michelle Coltrane – yes, that Coltrane, the only daughter of John and Alice – who will perform with the respected composer and guitarist Shea Walsh. The lineup also features Al Ryerson & the Joe Carter Duo (playing jazz standards mixed with bossa nova flair), Markus Gottschlich (an Austrian pianist) and Mads Tolling (an internationally renowned string musician from the Turtle Island Quartet), along with the South Florida Jazz Orchestra.

As he explained in his 2010 memoir “American On Purpose,” Craig Ferguson had a number of jobs before he found his niche in comedy, including punk-rock musician, construction worker, bouncer and, perhaps most improbably, modern dancer. His career as a humorist took off in the mid-80s in his native Scotland, when he adopted the character of an “uber-patriotic native folk singer” provocatively named Bing Hitler.

The act drew much attention and television coverage, enough to inspire a theater and television career under his real name. His most long-standing success remains his stewardship of CBS’ “Late Late Show,” which he inherited in 2005, using it as a vehicle for his homey, conversational comedic voice. He’s been one of the few solid rocks in the ever-shifting late night talk landscape, eventually pulling in better ratings than his NBC competitor, Jimmy Fallon. Tonight, though, he’s going back to his standup roots, in a jaunt titled “The Hot and Grumpy Tour.”

Serbian pianist Misha Dacic is one of those natural-born prodigies that makes the rest of us look lazy; musicians first took notice of him when he masterfully performed Haydn’s D Major concerto at the age of 11. Working his way through piano competitions in the late 1980s and 1990s, Dacic took home countless prizes and became one of the world’s foremost interpreters of Sergei Rachmaninov compositions. But Miami holds a special place for him, and vice versa: He made his U.S. debut there 10 years ago, and has since become a fixture at the Miami International Piano Festival. So it’s only fitting that Dacic, who would eventually relocate to Miami to pursue a full music scholarship at UM, would kick off the festival’s 2013-2014 season with this performance, which includes compositions by Bach, Mozart, Villalobos, Liszt and Albeniz.

Even without all the masterful work he has done with Talking Heads and as a solo artist, David Byrne would still deserve a footnote in music history for introducing much of the North American world (and beyond) to Brazil’s psychedelic pioneers Os Mutantes. The group thrived, initially, in the crazy ‘60s and into the experimental ‘70s, perfecting a danceable formula that merged their country’s musical heritage – bossa nova, tropicalia and samba – with the vogueish psychedelic influences of Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles; the result was border-shattering music unlike anything anybody had done before. The group disbanded in 1978 and was rediscovered decades later, when Byrne reissued its albums on his record label. Since reforming in 2006 – albeit with, currently, only one of its original members – Os Mutantes has again been a prolific force, continuing to influence musicians around the globe. This tour will support its latest album “Fool Metal Jack,” a collection of mostly English-language songs.